The
Trow Ghyll skeleton is a set of human remains
discovered on August 24, 1947 in Trow Ghyll cavern, near Clapham
in the West
Riding of Yorkshire. Although the identity of the body has never
been ascertained, it has been claimed that they were those of a
German
spy. The
unexplained death has been described as "the most notable" mystery
over a possible Nazi agent in Britain.
Discovery
On
August 24, 1947, two
friends who were keen potholers decided to go
out looking for new potholes to explore near the famous Ingleborough
Cave
. They were Jim Leach (December 23, 1920 – March 15, 2000) who was then
working as an electrician and living at
Great
Harwood
near Blackburn
, and Harold Burgess (1918 – August 11, 2000), then a motor
engineer and living in Leeds
. The
two were good friends (known as "Jim and Budge") who were members
of the
Northern Pennine Club
and later became business partners.
At about 12:30 PM, they discovered a small hole which was partly
obscured by stones. On moving the stones to make the entrance
bigger, Leach climbed down about 10 feet where he saw a pair of
shoes. Looking round he then saw the skull and the rest of the
body, under a large stone (although it was not resting on the
body); the remains had suffered advanced decomposition and there
was hardly any flesh remaining. Burgess spotted near the body a
small bottle of white powder which he assumed to be
flash powder.
Leach and
Burgess returned to Clapham to raise the alarm and later that
afternoon returned to the cave with Police Sergeant Nock of
Ingleton
; the police stationed a guard outside the cave
until the body could be photographed and then removed the following
day. The remains were taken to Skipton
mortuary and
the effects found in the cave were sent to the forensic laboratory at Wakefield
. The local community was quickly reassured
that foul play had been ruled out as a cause of death.
A second skeleton
By
coincidence, a week later on August 31
another skeleton was found not far away at Gaping Gill
. These remains were unidentified but were
found to be those of a man of between 25 and 35 years, who had died
two or three years previously, and had been killed in a fall down
the cave.
Inquest
The findings of the various checks on the discovery were reported
to an
inquest held on
November 25 at Skipton town hall before
Coroner Stephen E. Brown and a jury. Leach and
Burgess gave evidence of their discovery, and the police witnesses
told of how they had preserved the evidence and transmitted it to
the appropriate authorities. The main evidence at the inquest was
given by the scientific witnesses.
Post mortem examination
On
August 26, Professor P. L. Sutherland
conducted a
post mortem examination on
the body. He found that the remains were those of a man who was 5
ft. 5 ¼ in. tall, aged between 22 and 30 at the time of death, and
that death had occurred at least two and no more than six years
before. He was able to rule out broken or diseased bones as a cause
of death (none were fractured or broken), although not all of them
were present. The bones were entirely separate from each other and
the brain had disappeared; his clothes had rotted to the point
where it was difficult to distinguish them.
Forensic tests
Lewis Nickolls of the North East Forensic Science Laboratory
reported that the man had been wearing a blue shirt and tie, and a
grey-blue suit with red and white stripes "about three to the
inch". He had a tweedy herringbone overcoat, grey
trilby hat, and a plum coloured scarf (which would
have been over the mouth at the time of death). He also had light
brown to auburn hair.
The most interesting evidence dealt with those of the man's
possessions which had not rotted away. The glass bottle seen by
Burgess turned out not to contain flash powder, but
Sodium cyanide, a lethal poison. The bottle
was full to the shoulder although it was possible, said Nickolls,
to have extracted a lethal dose from it. An unbroken
ampule of the same material was also found. Of his
other possessions, the man had coins to the value of 11 shillings 5
½ pence, with none of the coins newer than 1939. Nickolls said that
the date of death would have been two years after that.
There were two pairs of shoes, one of which had been made in 1938
and the other in 1939.
There was a mineral water bottle of a type
supplied to hotels in Morecambe
, Lancaster
and Ingleton, and containing a blue 'crown' top not
introduced until 1940. Other items found with the man
included a wristlet watch, handkerchief, shaving tube, studs,
toothbrush, fountain pen, propelling pencil, compass, box of
matches, tablets, flashlamp, and toiletries. The man had a key but
the police were unable to identify the lock which it opened.
Identity
When the body was discovered, wide publicity was given and several
people came forward to link missing relatives to the remains. The
police compiled the suggestions into a list of 18, of which four
turned out to be alive, ten were ruled out for bearing no
resemblance to the remains, and for the four remaining it was
impossible to say whether they were the man. The inquest returned a
verdict that there was insufficient evidence of cause of death and
to identify the remains.
Mystery
At the inquest, Nicholls had been asked about the cyanide phial and
ampule and said that it was used commercially and as a poison for
vermin. However, he had to admit that he had not seen the same
design before. The legal historian
A. W.
B. Simpson, who was living in Clapham at the
time of the discovery, later noted that the only known users of
such an ampule were spies operating in enemy countries, who had
them in order to commit
suicide in the event
that they were discovered.
Simpson claimed that the individual was "plainly connected in some
way with the German secret service" and that he was "the most
notable .. mystery" over a German agent. He further remarked that
"Such enquiries as I have made from persons who ought to know have
produced evasiveness".
However, Simpson's claims are not supported by German intelligence
documents discovered after the war.
According to the British domestic security
service, MI5
, Germany had
sent around 115 agents against Britain during the course of the
war. Almost all of these had been successfully identified
and caught, with the exception of
Willem Ter Braak – not the body found at
Trow Ghyll – who had committed suicide before being captured.
[244261]
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